


The Lament of the Mockingbird

by MediaevalMuse



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:12:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediaevalMuse/pseuds/MediaevalMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Experiment in style more than a plot/story. Littlefinger reacts to news of the Red Wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lament of the Mockingbird

**Author's Note:**

> Littlefinger is a slimy, horrible, awful person, which means I find him interesting. I've always wondered how he would have reacted to the news of Cat's death.
> 
> As the summary states, this is an experiment in style more than developing a plot.

The news of the Red Wedding washed over King’s Landing like a tidal wave: all-encompassing, horrifying, yet beautiful in its own way. It was a tribute to the Lannisters’ military genius. Tywin was a hero, and “The Rains of Castamere” played unendingly in the taverns and halls of lesser lords. To some, the Red Wedding brought relief, and the news served as a refreshing mist that unburdened some of the anxiety from the constant war in Westeros. The joy overflowed in the form of overdrinking, and when “The Rains of Castamere” wasn’t playing, poets were improvising heroic epics, depicting the valiant Freys as defenders of the realm and their triumph as a gods-given victory that crushed the Northern Rebellion. The singers and players likewise set these spontaneous verses to music, embellishing the account here and there with tales of magic and bloodshed.

_Hair turned to fur, and man to cur  
The deepest, darkest night  
His red eyes gleamed and the women screamed  
Much to the Stark’s delight.  
With a savage roar, the young wolf tore  
The Frey bride limb from limb  
And though he prayed, he could not be saved  
For Tywin’s sword would end him. _

Of course, that’s not how it happened. But no one cared about the truth.

Joffrey was exuberant. He smirked when the messenger described the Bolton men sewing the direwolf’s head onto Robb Stark’s body and laughed at the retelling of Catelyn’s naked corpse tumbling into the river, a ribbon of black blood trailing behind her. The iron throne itself seemed to ring out as his dark pleasure filled the hall with cruel and sadistic humor. To celebrate, he ordered a feast to be prepared and desired to dine on red wine, red meat, and blood pudding.

Despite the festivities, to other inhabitants of King’s Landing, the Red Wedding was like a forceful grip around the throat, cutting off all life and hope for survival. Sansa could not mourn her family, and as a result, her heart grew heavy and her breath stopped short, both of which were invisible to the king’s constant need to inflict pain upon her and the queen regent’s ever-watchful eye. Though tears did not wet her cheeks and she smiled and rejoiced with the rest of the company, she saved her grief for later, when she was alone in her chamber. Sequestered in her mind, the pain ate away at her resolve slowly until she doubted whether or not she would survive this terrible war. With no home or family other than the foreign and distrustful Southerners around her, she began to feel like a fisherman trapped aboard a boat in a raging storm, optimistically rowing towards shore yet by circumstance becoming further and further pushed away to sea. She could do nothing now but continue her desperate pattern of smiling and nodding, agreeing with every word that dropped from Lannister lips. After all, she herself was now a Lannister. They were the only family she had, with her brother and mother gone forever; but Sansa was unsure if she would ever feel at home anywhere ever again.

While the wave bringing both joy and sadness rocked King’s Landing towards the coming night, it managed to thread into even the most secure crevices, shaking the man most resolute against such emotionally charged news. Luckily, no one, not even Varys, knew of his continued presence in the region; therefore, no one knew how the news affected him.

Littlefinger ran his hand along the crude wooden windowsill in his room in an inn just outside the city, hiding his newly awarded lordship from the keepers and the servers as he recorded detailed records and made diligent preparations for the journey ahead of him. In just a few nights, Joffrey would be dead and Tyrion charged with murder. The chaos would allow him to spirit Sansa away into the night and board her upon his ship, slumbering in disuse on the glossy waters of the bay. He imagined her look of gratitude, her sapphire blue eyes – her mother’s eyes – gazing up at him, wet with tears of happiness when he told her he was taking her to her mother and brother. She would take him by the hand and profess her debt to him. “I am eternally grateful, my lord,” she would say, and he would caress her beautiful auburn hair – her mother’s hair – and speak to her softly, “You will be home soon.”

When they reached the Eyrie, he would send word to Catelyn at Riverrun. Catelyn would rush to her sister’s abode, a trail of northmen and rivermen spread out behind her like a cloak. He imagined Catelyn’s face as she embraced her daughter in her arms, weeping and crying out at their reunion. How beautiful she would look, she and Sansa, as Littlefinger watched from a distance, waiting for his time to approach her. Finally, Cat would look up at him with her ocean-blue eyes – her daughter’s eyes – and immediately, all their past enmity would evaporate into the misty mountains around them. “Littlefinger,” she would say. And then, after a pause, “Petyr.” Oh, how the sound of his name on her lips would delight him. More musical than the lyre, softer than the down of a goose-feather bed, more intoxicating than the cunt of a whore. His insides aches with longing for her.

He was a lord now. His marriage to Lysa would grant considerable influence to further his ambitions, but as he conjured up an image of Cat in his mind’s eye, Littlefinger began to entertain the fantasy of fashioning a new plan, one where _he_ was the Warden of the North. His lips curled at the thought of it. Ned Stark’s bones lay beneath the earth of Winterfell. Cat was free to marry again. Who needed the Eyrie if he could swoop in and claim the North himself? “Lysa,” he would say, “I cannot marry you. I have only ever loved Cat. My dear Cat.” And he would finally hold his beloved in his arms while commanding the strength of a dozen bannermen at his back.

But Littlefinger knew this fantasy would never come to pass. He remembered lying to Catelyn in King’s Landing, the lie that started it all – all these grand plans and plots - and winced at the memory. It was the worst thing he ever did to her (betraying Ned didn’t count), and the more he thought about it, the more he realized Cat would never come to him as he wanted, she would never accept him as she did before, when they were children on the banks of the Red Fork. When he returned Sansa to her, he would receive her reserved gratitude, and nothing more. But he still dreamed, and he would continue to climb, higher than Harrenhal, higher than the Eyrie, until he sat on a throne in the clouds.

Snapping himself from his fancies, Littlefinger pushed open the ragged door and made his way out to the stables. The inhabitants rarely glimpsed a nobleman in all their lives. No one knew him, and he preferred to keep it that way. He mounted his steed, warm and breathing heavily beneath his thighs, and pursed his lips in annoyance as he eased the animal into a slow trot. _Stupid beast,_ he thought as the horse dragged its hooves in the earth, kicking up a cloud of dirt that enveloped Littlefinger in a gritty haze. He remembered then why he didn’t like horses, and looked around nervously, hoping to avoid any passing stranger that could recognize him.

For most of the day, he travelled to and from the ocean shore, talking discreetly with sailors to ensure his ship would appear at the right moment, unrecognized, on the night of the royal wedding. He wanted it to be a ghost, gliding across the shore as silent as a cat stalking its prey, and all the men assured him the ship would perform as promised. Littlefinger paid them a small advance and prepared to leave.

He didn’t entrust his spies with his location; he kept himself isolated and invisible, which, although advantageous for his affairs, left him uncomfortably ill-informed. Thus, an uncomfortable, hopeless feeling fell over Littlefinger when he heard the news from King’s Landing. Hopeless at first because he had not known as soon as it happened, but later as he felt the control he once exerted over the war and the political games slip through his fingers.

“Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen,” Littlefinger said as he hoisted himself into the saddle. A middle-aged, weather-beaten man tapped his fingers to his forehead in parting.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

Littlefinger was about to depart when he spied the rest of the party passing a bottle between them. 

“What’s the occasion?” Littlefinger asked, his face smiling without kindness.

“Didn’t you hear?” the man replied. “The Stark boy is dead!”

“Which one?” Littlefinger asked, already knowing but dreading the answer.

“Which one? The so-called king in the north! Him and that Tully bitch! Pardon me, sir.”

“Tully?”

“Lady Stark.”

“Catelynn Stark is dead.” It was a statement more than a question. He felt the blood rush from his face.

“Slashed through the throat and tossed in the river. Naked.” The man snickered. “Robb though, he was stabbed ‘bout half a hundred times. Him and his northern scum.” The man leaned in closer. “They say he turned into a direwolf but when they killed him, he was a man again.”

“Is that so? Who killed him? Lannisters?”

“Them and the Freys.”

“I thought so.”

He turned his horse and began to leave without another word.

Littlefinger did not allow himself to feel anything as he rode back to the inn. He kept his mind blank, an empty slate void of plans and thoughts and emotions, as he absent-mindedly urged his horse on faster and faster. His face felt sullen, and the wind nipped at the corners of his eyes and the end of his nose, making him feel as though a cold, porcelain mask sat where his face should have been. It was a mask he had worn so often in his life that he barely noticed it anymore - in fact, it had become his face - but now, now, it was more present than ever. He gave no expression, no looks of joy or despair, and it was only when he reached his destination that he realized how his knees had dug into the animal’s sides, leaving him sore in his thighs and the horse breathing laboriously and frothing at the mouth. As he slid his beast to a halt, he slipped from his saddle and tossed the reins to a small boy in one quick motion. His pace was heavy and purposeful and his gaze as hard and sharp as Valyrian steel.

“I do not wish to be disturbed,” Littlefinger commanded as he breezed past the innkeeper. Despite the calm and collected tone, something about his voice made the man shudder. It was worse than if he had yelled.

“Yes, sir,” he replied as Littlefinger made his way to his room. He purposely avoided looking in his direction until he heard the muffled sound of a door slamming on the level above him.

Littlefinger stood with his back to the door, letting it support him as he dropped his head in his hand. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, struggling, now that he was alone, to wade through the flood of sensations that took over his body. His chest felt compressed, like he was being constricted by the coils of an enormous snake, and his breath caught in his throat. He tugged off his riding gloves and threw them, violently, across the room, hearing their dull _flap_ on the wall and then the floor. As his head dropped back into his hands, his mind transported him back to Riverrun, to feeling low-born and denied everything he ever wanted. How could he _not know_ of Tywin’s plot? Had he not placed the Kettleblacks at Cersei’s door? Did he not have informants _everywhere_?

Strangely, his first thought was if Varys knew of the plans before they happened, but even if he had, the Master of Whispers would do nothing to prevent it. “For the good of the realm,” he would say. “For peace.” And indeed, Robb’s demise would bring a sense of peace to the Seven Kingdoms, for now the riverlands and the northmen would be loyal to the crown, however unwillingly.

But Catelyn was dead.

Littlefinger’s legs could no longer hold him, and he slid down the length of the door until he sat upon the hard wood beneath him. There would be no tearful reunion. No reserved gratitude. He would not see her beautiful auburn hair and stunning blue eyes, never embrace her again, never have the chance to tell her – _really_ tell her – what he felt, which had endured unerringly since he challenged Brandon Stark for her hand at Riverrun. He touched his chest, resting a hand over where the scar cut across his heart, and reminded himself that even as Cat became the wife to Ned, and soon mother to five northern children, his love for her had never waned throughout the years. But now that she was gone, all his climbing seemed empty and hollow. He had lost her, now for the second time, and yet this time hurt more than the first. Now, there was no hope. Without her, he was nothing. There was nothing to prove anymore. He was poor and no amount of climbing could earn him his goal: to be powerful enough to love whomever he pleased. That kind of power did not penetrate the veil of death.

Littlefinger felt a stinging sensation at the back of his eyes, so he clenched his fists and folded his arms over his knees, burying his face in the voluminous sleeves of his robe. He did not weep, but a sudden tightening in his throat caused his chest to burn. Painfully, he forced heavy breaths into his lungs that softly fluttered the fabric as he tried to stifle his breathing, as if letting them out would betray his inner self. Littlefinger felt a heavy weight drop into his core, creating a strange mixture of pain between the dull ache of his heart, the sharpness of memory in his head, and the burning in his eyes and throat. He raised one hand to his head and grasped a few locks of his hair in his fingers, attempting to keep hold of himself as he felt his sense of control slipping away. True, he had wanted chaos. Chaos would allow him to forge strength, a mighty chain by which he would pull himself up into the light, out of the screaming pit that was Westeros. But now that Cat was gone, he wasn’t sure if, after all his climbing, he would emerge into light. Without Cat, there was only darkness.

He felt his face grow hot when he thought of filthy Frey and Bolton hands upon her, ripping bloodied folds of gown from her limbs and parading her listless corpse for all to see. How many times had they touched her? Did they keep her red-stained clothes? Prod her cold and lifeless cunt? Littlefinger felt a sharp pain in his skull as he pulled harder on his hair, rage and vengeance overwhelming his thoughts and temporarily blocking the feeling of loss. When she had come to him before, when Ned was alive, he had sheltered her in his whorehouse. Even now, he still felt embarrassed for bringing Cat, a noblewoman and, to him, the pinnacle of beauty and grace, into the lowly presence of his employees; but even as she stood in the red room of the pleasure house, the taint of seediness and lust could not touch her. She had stood erect, her head perfectly poised upon her proud shoulders, and looked into his eyes. The Freys and Boltons, in their treachery, had done what his whorehouse had failed to do: they defiled her blood and her honor when they reduced everything that was Catelyn Tully to a lifeless body.

When he thought of her, the image of her beautiful auburn hair fading to a dull grey in the murdering waters, his mind immediately drifted to Sansa.

Beautiful young Sansa, the daughter of Catelyn Tully and Eddard Stark. Yet there was not a hint of Stark in her face. Would the North accept her now, without a mother or father to protect her? She was too young to be the ruler of Winterfell. He needed a new plan.

The determination motivated him enough to rise to his feet, but he feared to move, his legs shook so violently. No, he thought to himself. You must keep climbing. He closed his eyes and stilled his trembling limbs, pushing the image of Cat from his mind and fixating his thoughts on Sansa. _More beautiful than her mother._ With confident steps, he made his way to a table and chair where he sank into the decrepit old wood, which groaned under his weight. _Sansa._

She was a pawn. A pawn in his game. Resting a hand on his temple, Littlefinger began to strategize, taking comfort in the activity that he performed so well. The aching in his chest subsided and his breathing became easier, more open and free, expanding his insides and making his body feel more roomy than it was before. _Marry her off,_ he thought. _Give her to an Arryn. An heir of the Vale._ He was tempted to marry Sansa himself, making good on the offer he proposed to Cersei back in King’s Landing. He felt a fire ignite in his belly at the thought of kissing her, its tendrils rising up and licking at his heart. Would she taste like her mother had? _No,_ he thought, angrily. Power. Power was all that mattered. The Lannisters were reminding him of that with the death of Ned Stark’s wife. Cat was nothing, and now, he was free from the bonds of his memory. He could all but see his own hand reaching up for the next rung on the ladder of chaos, and that rung was Lysa.

 _I will tear this kingdom apart,_ he vowed. _I will burn it down until I sit on a throne of ash._


End file.
